So you want your K-6 students to blog because you want them to have an audience beyond your classroom. What do you do? Do you set up a blog for each student or for your class, perhaps using http://edublogs.org? Do you join us at http://youthvoices.net or do you join http://kidblog.org ? And there are plenty of other choices.

But here's the rub: How do you get your students' posts out there in the world to get responses from K-6 students like them? How can be build a stronger community of elementary school teachers whose students are blogging together?

We would like to invite you to help us consider some of these questions with the amazing educators on this episode of TTT.

Consider QuadBlogging and other complications around having your own class EduBlog or working in a community like Youth Voices or KidBlog, and the problems and delights of having different ages working together, or not?

Gail Desler and Kevin Hodgson started this conversation in November at NCTE and they would like to see if it might not be possible to get something started with NWP elementary school teachers around some sort of community that gets more and more comments flowing.

Here's Gail's recent email that led us to schedule a TTT around this topic:

I would love to head into the New Year with some shared discussions on creating an elementary community of digital kids/digital writers that would lead into YouthVoices, but would actually be its own community. As I mentioned to both of you at NCTE, I'm spurred on by Suzie Boss's (who will be joining us on TTT) recent Edutopia post: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/quad-blogging-technology-classroom-suzie-boss Just seems like a perfect NWP project - that would be pretty easy to initiate and maintain.

That's not all! On Wednesday, January 9, 2013, we plan a follow-up conversation with many of the same people on this episode. Join us at http://edtechtalk.com/ttt on Wednesday, 1.9.13 at 5PM ET/2PM PT/World Times: http://goo.gl/024pD

21:20Peggy George: music is such a wonderful way to express feelings and emotions!

21:22Aman: Getting some great ideas on how to discuss Sandy Hook with students, and how to incorperate writing. My 5th graders have been having conversations on the playground, but none have brought it up in class.

21:22Peggy George: it's great to be hearing from some elementary teachers :-)

21:23Peggy George: these are great ideas!!

21:23Peggy George: @Tony did you just set up a class twitter account with a hashtag? Such a great idea!

21:24Peggy George: Hi Sue Waters :-)

21:24Sue Waters: Hi Peggy :) Had some Sue issues :)

21:24Tony Iannone: just created one...not a hashtag...here's our feed class_mr_i

21:39Peggy George: Hi Matt! Great to see you in this conversation! Heard you on Conversations last week. :-)

21:39Matt Hardy: Hi Peggy!

21:41Peggy George: I would love to have you do a presentation on one of our weekly Classroom 2.0 LIVE webinars! Lots of people are interested in KidBlogs. :-)

21:42Sue Waters: @Gail P that is an inteesting point Saw some one tweet last week about a student who was hating blogging but loves creattive writing so I reminded her to give students option of what media they use with blogging i.e. can be more than writing

21:42Matt Hardy: Peggy - Happy to do so. Get in touch with me at matt@kidblog.org and we'll set it up.

21:42Peggy George: excellent point @Sue! Choice is so important

21:42Peggy George: I have my email draft already started Matt :-)

21:42Matt Hardy: Embed those VoiceThreads into Kidblog and create a portfolio starting in Kindergarten.

21:52Peggy George: Fantastic Tony! I would be very interested in reading it once you get it finished. Hope you'll publish it online somewhere. :-)

21:52Tony Iannone: @Matt...not sure if you saw this at the beginning...I did some pilot work at a tech camp this summer...watched kids work with kidblog. It was very interesting to see what they did with it!

21:52Peggy George: a silent star...

21:53Gail Poulin: test

21:53Peggy George: what are you testing @Gail P? :-)

21:54Sue Waters: Maybe how @Matt wrote what Sue Wates said :)

21:54Peggy George: LOL

21:54Gail Poulin: I was chatting as Sue Wates!!?

21:55Sue Waters: You were chattting as me other name @Gail P :)

21:55Peggy George: you're hacking the system @Gail :-) clever!

21:55Sue Waters: @Gail P that is so funny

21:55Gail Poulin: that's how I roll

21:56Tony Iannone: @Matt...I could see how the theme would lend itself to participants getting to know each other through what Kevin just said, "...a shared interest."

21:56Suzie Boss: connected inquiry--interesting way to think about this

21:57Peggy George: I really agree with Paul about the public/private

21:58Sue Waters: FYI a lot of our users use both Edublogs and Edmodo

21:58Sue Waters: as they do Edublogs and Kidblog

21:58Sue Waters: each are used for different purposes

21:59Matt Hardy: Spot on, @Sue

22:00Peggy George: @Sue-I wish you would get on the mic and talk about how that happens - using both Edublogs and Edmodo

22:02Peggy George: thanks Sue. I'll read that but I'd still love to hear you discuss it. Maybe in a followup conversation?? :-)

22:02Aman: Some great resources and articles being posted. Thanks @Sue

22:02Gail Desler : I think it's important that students' online writing does not disappear at the end of a school year

22:02Peggy George: sounds like someone is multitasking and getting their dishes done :-)

22:03Sue Waters: I think is would be good to get someone like Henrietta Miller to discuss the differing reasons

22:03Sue Waters: You can quadblog from any platform

22:03Peggy George: Henrietta Miller would be awesome

22:04Sue Waters: I think Webbly is probably the more challenge from memory as teachers forget to set up the blogging compentent

22:04Peggy George: not sure what you mean? Easy to set up a blog on Weebly

22:04Sue Waters: @Peggy I remember in the student challenge we have an issue with one platform

22:05Sue Waters: where the teachers set it up as a web site but haven't enabled the blog aspect

22:05Peggy George: can't they add the blog after they create their website?

22:05Suzie Boss: Seems like audience and purpose are the two big questions

22:06Peggy George: I would love to see this conversation continue!!!

22:06Tony Iannone: who the kids imagine their audience is...is very important.

22:06Suzie Boss: Yes, try/test/iterate!

22:07Peggy George: love the way you said that @Tony. "kids imagine their audience" it really does involve imagination :-)

22:07Suzie Boss: great conversation!

22:07Suzie Boss: Look forward to seeing where this goes

22:07Aman: Thank you all! Can't wait the hear more.

22:07Peggy George: me too Suzie!!!

22:07Tony Iannone: ...taps into what I was mentioning earlier...could be enabling...could be constraining. For example...if I know my teacher is reading...I may write in a way that is different than if it's jsut my friends.

22:07karen (@kfasimpaur): Thanks all! Happy holidays.

22:07Sue Waters: The main thing you need to consider is the success of any relies on the teacher

22:08Peggy George: there are many primary teachers we could invite to join this conversation! Can't wait!

22:08Tony Iannone: That was very cool!! Thanks for letting me be a part of it!!!!

22:09Peggy George: thank you all for sharing!!!

22:09Gail Desler : Very true Sue

22:09Sue Waters: Thanks all and have a great holiday session!

22:09Peggy George: good night all!

22:09Gail Desler : I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation in the New Year. Night all

22:10Cassandra Shannon: Thank you for this very cool topic of bloging

22:11Cassandra Shannon: I would love to hear more about the students learning to understand shakesphere

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